Decrescendo
by cafenera
Summary: How did Claudia Jardine survive the Gathering?


Title: Decrescendo

Author: chamomile chick

Summary: Claudia Jardine and the gathering

Rating: PG (people die, but not "onscreen")

The gathering came. And went. And Claudia Jardine played Bach's Polonaise from Suite in B  
Minor throughout the final battle, unaware of it except for a small itch at the back of her neck.

Walter had left, inexplicably, at the end of the last tour. She'd noticed his increasing anxiety and  
paranoia, and had attributed it simply to another immortal after one or both of them.

So she'd simply ignored him (as per her usual fashion) and become a little more fastidious about  
cleaning her gun every morning. (She wasn't stupid, despite whatever Duncan may have thought:  
she knew they were after her, and all the musical skill in the world couldn't help her if another  
immortal were truly determined to have her head. So an immortal could kill her. She no longer  
had to worry about stubbing her toe, being hit by a car, or even the breast cancer that her  
adoption papers listed as the cause of death of her maternal mother and grandmother. To  
Claudia, this was a fair trade.)

But one day she'd shown up at the doorway to the practice hall, and Walter's buzz wasn't there  
to greet her. She simply assumed that he was late, and practiced until lunch, when she went to his  
apartment to check up on him.

The door was left unlocked, uncharacteristic of Walter. His favorite sword was gone from the  
umbrella stand near the door, but nothing else seemed missing or disturbed.

So Claudia left a note on the fridge, locked up, and went on with her life. Amsterdam was a  
relatively immortal-free city, and she wasn't too worried. If Walter was gone, he had good  
reason, and she'd find out sooner or later what it was.

She got an email from Duncan three days later: avoid New York and Paris at all costs. It said no  
more, and she got the feeling that he was pulled away from the computer suddenly: there was no  
signature and the punctuation was almost nonexistent, which was a surprise coming from her  
benefactor.

But when she started to read in the newspaper of sudden freak lightning storms in the world's  
largest cities, she started to worry. Duncan had warned her of the gathering, the pull that  
immortals would feel, the urge to meet and fight which could overcome any bonds of friendship  
that had formed over the ages.

Claudia assumed that she simply felt no drive to compete because of her youth. Even after seven  
years as an immortal, she was still an infant compared to those who'd survived centuries and  
millennia.

But the news of Walter's death came as a shock. She'd steeled herself for it, of course, but after  
getting the call from the Cairo police department at four in the morning she'd wept for hours.

Then she'd pulled herself together. If Walter, an eight-hundred year old lover of the arts could be  
killed for no discernable reason, than she, a woman in her late thirties with no training and no  
protection, was certainly at risk.

So, thanking her lucky stars for whatever extra time she'd been granted, she started carrying a  
fighting knife with her in addition to her glock, and signed up for martial arts and fencing lessons at  
the closest community college. She knew that if it came down to a fight to the death, she'd loose  
spectacularly, but Claudia Jardine was a proud woman, and wouldn't go down without a fight.

Months passed, and Claudia felt no urge to travel to Paris, or anywhere else, for that matter. She  
cancelled her next tour, much to the dismay of her performance company, and spent her free time  
training. Her lack of compulsion was almost a disappointment after all her efforts. Almost.

So she spent the gathering holed up in Amsterdam. Immortals died by the hundreds, and Claudia  
Jardine played on.

Months passed, and she gave passing thought to why she still felt no pull. Duncan no longer wrote  
or responded to her emails, and she got a call from a woman she didn't know in New York  
informing her of a Connor McLeod's death. Apparently she was in his phonebook.

A year passed, and she gave up on waiting. As long as she was alive, she thought, she should  
truly live. So she went back on tour. She stopped restricting herself to music, and learned the joys  
of partying until the sun came up in Santorini where she toasted Duncan – he'd said a friend of  
his recommended it and she actually skipped out on a practice at the Sydney Opera House,  
claiming to be sick, and learned to water ski.

Another year passed and another. She wondered where the immortals were – after all, she went  
from one highly populated city to another on her tours, but never felt any. The reports of lightning  
storms had disappeared, so there couldn't be too many more, and the few left had to absolutely  
obsessed with taking heads.

A decade passed, and Claudia stopped mourning Walter. She'd gone as far in the martial arts  
and fencing as she assumed she ever could, so she stopped her lessons.

And then it happened. Her hairdresser recommended a dye to get rid of a few wisps of gray that  
she'd noticed on the back of Claudia's head. The resulting panic attack and hasty exit from the  
salon were written about in the gossip columns of the Amsterdam papers.

Two days later, a man and a woman knocked on her door, identifying themselves as Watchers,  
members of a group Duncan had warned her about. To be honest, the very idea of their  
organization creeped her out, but she let them in, as they seemed to know what they were talking  
about, and Claudia wanted answers.

Apparently, she wasn't the only immortal to avoid the gathering. A three hundred year old nun in  
Sarajevo and a woodsman in the Alaskan wilderness had also felt no pull to fight. The three of  
them had nothing in common except for one major fact: none of them had ever taken a head.

So Claudia was now mortal. The few decades she'd spent impervious to disease and injury were  
gone.

To her surprise, she felt a calm come over her with this news. She thanked the Watchers, who  
seemed vaguely disappointed at her lack of reaction, and showed them out.

She went into the bathroom, and stared at her reflection. She was mortal. She wondered if she  
could have children now. Suddenly the prospect of small hands following hers on the piano  
seemed highly desirable, as it never had before.

She laughed, surprising herself.

Somehow, the world now seemed even more free and open.

THE END 


End file.
